A forum of free voices discussing today's Italian politics and its historical roots

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

From the start the blog was intended to be a forum for the discussion and presentation of different views and this year we have had a contribution from Nora Galli de' Paratesi. For the next few weeks the blog will host contributions from AUR students completing the semester's Italian Politics course.

Their own worst enemies?

Alba Lupia

On March 11th terrorism again shook the western world, this time concentrating itself in Europe. Within 3 days of the massacre of innocent civilians in Spain the people chose to change their government. A historical amount of voters flooded the polls to oust Jose' Maria Aznar who had sent troops to Iraq, favorour of the Socialist leader Zapatero. Three days later the Spanish people had spoken. If the UN does not take control of the reconstruction in post-war Iraq by June 30th, Spanish troops will withdraw.

The repercussions of this change over will be felt in all of America's allies. The curiosity lies in how far the vibrations will actually reach. In Italy the biggest left-wing party the DS has since February 14th begun their steps towards at least an electoral alliance with the centre-left Margherita (Daisy) called the Olive Tree Alliance in the hope of an eventual defeat of the current Berlusconi run government. In the coalition Fassino and Prodi are striving for a victory in the June European elections as a prelude to Italian the elections of 2006. This coalition of the left prides itself on bringing peace to Italy once in power. An important question remains: how "united" is this pacifist coalition?

On the anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, demonstrators all over Europe marched through their cities' squares to reaffirm Zapatero's statement and what they had rallied for one year before. The demonstration in Rome was one of the largest with perhaps as many as a million people taking part. The historical centre was swarming with rainbow peace flags and good intentions. That afternoon however, the peace march became divisive. In a very crowded area near Santa Maria Maggiore the demonstrators were forced to stand still for several hours. One of the many supporting groups of the DS, also the most important due to party secretary Piero Fassino's presence, tried to enter the march at this point and found itself face to face with some of the most radical segments of the movement. Soon enough young radicals began casting insults and throwing objects in opposition to the supposed solidarity of Fassino. His offence in their eyes was that he had gone to the previous Thursday's demonstration "against terrorism" where centre right politicians had gone too; as bad, the DS had not voted against the continued financing of Italian missions abroad in Parliament the week before. Fassino had wanted to support the earlier Italian peace missions some of which the DS had initiated but vote against the Iraq mission; the Government made this impossible by combining the vote, hence the DS compromise. At the demonstration, despite the heckling, the tension was shortlived and peace again took to the streets.

In the following days some journalists especially on television and in pro-government papers have taken this event to prove that the centre-left is even more divided. It has been compared to the activities of '77 which climaxed with the death of Aldo Moro. The peace march is now being used as another weapon in Italian political controversy.

It seems that the left's enemies are not the right but instead found on their own side. The right calls this the typical "sickness" of the left. The ostensible unity is in fact in jeopardy. On one side of the spectrum there are the radicals who chant "tutti a casa, via di Baghdad". These absolute pacifists that make up a large part of the voting left are faced with opposition in their own alliance. The dominant idea is backed by the DS. Reform and reorganization for peace is the central plan. The incident on Saturday was a sign for the left to not only discuss their ideas on reform and peace but to revaluate their state of unity. They need to ask themselves What is reform for peace? Is it the unconditional withdrawal of Italian troops or continuing to stay present under UN command in hopes of helping the reconstruction of the Iraqi government? The other day demonstrators yelled for the removal of the troops but the politicians of the left insist that this will not bring peace. Instead Italy would be turning its back on the problem and alienating itself from the rest of Europe. They want a Spanish-style policy of keeping troops in Iraq but under UN command.
If the Olive Tree coalition hopes to win votes these questions must be answered. Their image of unity is dissipating as Fassino is accused of compromising with the pro-Bush government and the Prodi list must be made clearer.
The coalition was not even united for a single peace march let alone on ideas of reform and advancement.
The centre left are full of ideas for change and whether or not they can implement them once in power is arguable. These ideas are mostly anti-Berlusconi instead of ones with a definite programme for change.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Who's next?
And what do we do about it?

In the 1930s, Aldous Huxley observed wryly that it would take a Martian invasion for humankind to unite; something like that happened briefly yesterday for Europeans as the whole continent stopped in silence for three minutes at midday. Here in Rome the Italian tricolour, the European stars and the city banners had all been at half mast for the previous three days and the shock and solidarity went way beyond media hype and political leaders in dark suits and with grave faces.

But already yesterday, from the moment the Spanish election results were clear, the bickering began again. It is louder here to be sure as is the Italian custom but the underlying issues cut across the continent. They are issues which deserve to be debated carefully, not dispassionately but with accuracy and with as little mystification as possible. It probably will not happen and the tones will be strident and based on deep-seated prejudices walled in by powerful rhetoric and doubtful logic.

But here is an attempt to move in the other direction.

On the increasingly likely hypothesis that the Madrid bombs were a radical Islamic attack, they are traumatic to Europeans for two reasons. The first is the scale of the carnage; the biggest previous attacks, Bologna in 1980 and Omagh in 1998 did not reach three figures. The second, and I think more disturbing element is the alien and for most people totally incomprehensible aim of the attack. Whether it was the IRA, red or black terrorism in Italy, or Spain’s own Basques, these were objectives that most of us can relate to, understand and put in historical and cultural context and then elaborate ways of fighting back.

There is a parallel here in the United States between Oklahoma and 9/11. The first was horrendous in scale but was the work of a lone (American) fanatic. The results are terrible for the bereaved and for the city but did not change society. 9/11 clearly did and not only because of the scale of death and destruction but because of the near invisibility of the enemy.

It has always puzzled me why chemical weapons have been banned soon after their invention while other more traditional weapons continued to kill. Is it worse to die from mustard gas burning your lungs or shrapnel disembowelling you? The reason, or at least one reason, is the perceived insidiousness of gas as opposed to an explosive shell. So it is with this new kind of terrorism.

Most of Europe has had direct experience of terrorism in the last forty years. Sometimes the targets were random, the French Secret Army Organisation, the OAS, the Italian right, sometimes the Basques and both sides of the Northern Irish divide. Other times it was targeted, the Italian left, the Basques again and Ulster again. There were moments when both society and governments were put under serious stress and there were deep divisions. Today’s threat is different because it seems to come from outside our society and threaten the whole of it as much as we can understand.

So we should have the Martian effect with all of Europe united and united with the US. We don’t because since the threat is so vague, there cannot be a single response or even agreement on how the threat is articulated.

The first political effect of the Madrid bombs was that enough Spanish voters changed their minds, either by changing their vote or by actually going out to vote in order to change opinion poll predictions. There are three possible reasons as far as I can see: they punished the lies and equivocations of the government, two: they felt that Zapatero and the PSOE is better equipped to deal with the new emergency and three: a technical reason, that the higher turnout was made up of previously half-committed PSOE voters.

If the second reason is dominant, then, broadly speaking, we have two possible motivations. First, that those voters feel that by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq, they will be safe from future attack; the appeasement, or Danegeld argument. Secondly, that this radical Islamic terrorism is best faced by a combined effort of the international community under as broad an umbrella as possible (in Zapatero’s case, he wants to see the UN take over in Iraq).

Coming back to Italy (and the UK, Denmark and Poland all of whom have troops in Iraq), the debate has to be put in terms of how best to deal with the threat which we face (and no doubt even those countries which opposed the war as well). Radical Islamic violence is not just or even primarily aimed at the so-called “West”. Moderate and secular Islamic countries bore the initial brunt of the movement for most of the ‘90s – in Algeria, in Morocco, in Egypt and in Afghanistan. Invading one of those secular countries however brutal a dictatorship Saddam’s Iraq was, has only stoked the fires of Islamic radicalism, allowed it into Iraq, provided fertile recruitment ground for many others, Arab and non-Arab.

But Iraq has been invaded and is policed by a largely foreign force which cannot be removed without causing a complete disaster for west and east alike. So the only way to begin to rebuild consensus and begin to dry up the sources of Islamic radicalism is to make the soldiers into peacekeepers rather than occupiers and give responsibility to the international community. Angelo Panebianco in to-day’s Corriere argues that the Spanish threat to withdraw the troops is the equivalent of Munich 1938. He has misread time and place; the parallels are with Dayton 1995 which began the Balkan piece process. To widen the legality and the responsibility of the foreign presence in Iraq is the opposite of appeasement.

This is hardly an original hope but it is one based on the methods used to successfully stop political radicals in Italy from using terrorist methods. Mr. Zapatero’s victory on Sunday is a model for those in the rest of Europe who were against the invasion of Iraq and who were convinced that tanks and missiles encourage terrorism rather than curb it. The left in Italy, Britain and Denmark will use it in June’s European Parliament elections; the right and Tony Blair are warned that their military support of the US has a political price tag.

In the 1930s, Aldous Huxley observed wryly that it would take a Martian invasion for humankind to unite; something like that happened briefly yesterday for Europeans as the whole continent stopped in silence for three minutes at midday. Here in Rome the Italian tricolour, the European stars and the city banners had all been at half mast for the previous three days and the shock and solidarity went way beyond media hype and political leaders in dark suits and with grave faces.

But already yesterday, from the moment the Spanish election results were clear, the bickering began again. It is louder here to be sure as is the Italian custom but the underlying issues cut across the continent. They are issues which deserve to be debated carefully, not dispassionately but with accuracy and with as little mystification as possible. It probably will not happen and the tones will be strident and based on deep-seated prejudices walled in by powerful rhetoric and doubtful logic.

But here is an attempt to move in the other direction.

On the increasingly likely hypothesis that the Madrid bombs were a radical Islamic attack, they are traumatic to Europeans for two reasons. The first is the scale of the carnage; the biggest previous attacks, Bologna in 1980 and Omagh in 1998 did not reach three figures. The second, and I think more disturbing element is the alien and for most people totally incomprehensible aim of the attack. Whether it was the IRA, red or black terrorism in Italy, or Spain’s own Basques, these were objectives that most of us can relate to, understand and put in historical and cultural context and then elaborate ways of fighting back.

There is a parallel here in the United States between Oklahoma and 9/11. The first was horrendous in scale but was the work of a lone (American) fanatic. The results are terrible for the bereaved and for the city but did not change society. 9/11 clearly did and not only because of the scale of death and destruction but because of the near invisibility of the enemy.

It has always puzzled me why chemical weapons have been banned soon after their invention while other more traditional weapons continued to kill. Is it worse to die from mustard gas burning your lungs or shrapnel disembowelling you? The reason, or at least one reason, is the perceived insidiousness of gas as opposed to an explosive shell. So it is with this new kind of terrorism.

Most of Europe has had direct experience of terrorism in the last forty years. Sometimes the targets were random, the French Secret Army Organisation, the OAS, the Italian right, sometimes the Basques and both sides of the Northern Irish divide. Other times it was targeted, the Italian left, the Basques again and Ulster again. There were moments when both society and governments were put under serious stress and there were deep divisions. Today’s threat is different because it seems to come from outside our society and threaten the whole of it as much as we can understand.

So we should have the Martian effect with all of Europe united and united with the US. We don’t because since the threat is so vague, there cannot be a single response or even agreement on how the threat is articulated.

The first political effect of the Madrid bombs was that enough Spanish voters changed their minds, either by changing their vote or by actually going out to vote in order to change opinion poll predictions. There are three possible reasons as far as I can see: they punished the lies and equivocations of the government, two: they felt that Zapatero and the PSOE is better equipped to deal with the new emergency and three: a technical reason, that the higher turnout was made up of previously half-committed PSOE voters.

If the second reason is dominant, then, broadly speaking, we have two possible motivations. First, that those voters feel that by withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq, they will be safe from future attack; the appeasement, or Danegeld argument. Secondly, that this radical Islamic terrorism is best faced by a combined effort of the international community under as broad an umbrella as possible (in Zapatero’s case, he wants to see the UN take over in Iraq).

Coming back to Italy (and the UK, Denmark and Poland all of whom have troops in Iraq), the debate has to be put in terms of how best to deal with the threat which we face (and no doubt even those countries which opposed the war as well). Radical Islamic violence is not just or even primarily aimed at the so-called “West”. Moderate and secular Islamic countries bore the initial brunt of the movement for most of the ‘90s – in Algeria, in Morocco, in Egypt and in Afghanistan. Invading one of those secular countries however brutal a dictatorship Saddam’s Iraq was, has only stoked the fires of Islamic radicalism, allowed it into Iraq, provided fertile recruitment ground for many others, Arab and non-Arab.

But Iraq has been invaded and is policed by a largely foreign force which cannot be removed without causing a complete disaster for west and east alike. So the only way to begin to rebuild consensus and begin to dry up the sources of Islamic radicalism is to make the soldiers into peacekeepers rather than occupiers and give responsibility to the international community. Angelo Panebianco in to-day’s Corriere argues that the Spanish threat to withdraw the troops is the equivalent of Munich 1938. He has misread time and place; the parallels are with Dayton 1995 which began the Balkan piece process. To widen the legality and the responsibility of the foreign presence in Iraq is the opposite of appeasement.

This is hardly an original hope but it is one based on the methods used to successfully stop political radicals in Italy from using terrorist methods. Mr. Zapatero’s victory on Sunday is a model for those in the rest of Europe who were against the invasion of Iraq and who were convinced that tanks and missiles encourage terrorism rather than curb it. The left in Italy, Britain and Denmark will use it in June’s European Parliament elections; the right and Tony Blair are warned that their military support of the US has a political price tag.

Monday, March 01, 2004

Telekom Srbija: scandal or electioneering?

In the general scheme of things political in Italy, the Telekom Serbia story is pretty low in terms of real significance even in its effects on politicians let alone on the rest of the country. But it does provide a useful microscope with which to examine the broader workings of the system.

Last week saw one of the chief accusers being arrested and charged with perjury and at the moment, at least, it looks as if the story will deflate and disappear.

Like all good scandal stories, Telekom Serbia had layers under layers and it was never clear if the right metaphor was an onion where you peel and peel and end up with nothing, or an artichoke where at the end of the leaves, there is a succulent heart covered with a spiky beard. Today we are closer to the onion.

There were alleged bribes and slush funds; there are shady Balkan and Italian characters, top names in Italian politics as well as of course Slobodan Milosevic, respectable and louche bankers and their agents in London, Switzerland and Monte Carlo. Magistrates, parliamentarians and journalists are all searching for the truth, or for some, the most useful “truth”. Beneath the hype was the more banal possibility of a badly thought out deal with insufficient political control exercised, one one which seemed a good idea at the time and then turned out to be much less of one.

First of all the few facts which almost no one disputes: on 9 June 1997, Italian Telecom, then a state-owned company, bought a 29% share in Telekom Serbia for 843 million D-marks. The shares were sold back to the now privatised Telecom Italia in February 2003 for 193 million euros. Beyond this, all is interpretation, hypothesis or evidence before court and Parliament.

The accusation from the centre-right is that a good portion of the purchase price went into a Milosevic slush fund and thus indirectly contibuted to the war crimes he is accused of. Worse for the centre-left as we move towards European elections this year and Italian ones in ‘06, are the allegations that then senior members of government received hefty kickbacks on the deal. Happen that two of the names belong to present leaders of the Olive: then Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Undersecretary for Foreign Trade, and Piero Fassino, the most likely Prime Ministerial and Deputy Prime Ministerial candidates in ‘06; the third name is Lamberto Dini, then the Foreign Minister and still an important figure. At one stage last year, a whole raft of Olive leaders’ names was being bandied about from Mastella to Veltroni to Rutelli. Finally, there is a shadow in the background, the then Economics Minister, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, now President and therefore supposedly worthy of respect and above party politicking. Still, he has already blocked the government’s media reform bill and Mr. Berlusconi has been clear that he does not appreciate the President’s powers so any lever on the person or the insitution is useful.

The slush fund story was broken by the centre-left Repubblica in 2001 but for most of last year, it was the ultra-pro-Berlusconi Libero and the Prime Minister’s brother’s paper, Giornale which made the running so much so that DS leader Piero Fassino accused Mr. Berlusconi of being the “puppetmaster” organising a campaign of defamation.

There are judicial investigations in Turin which began in 2001, looking into possible bribes, fraud and tax offences around the deal plus accusations of kickbacks. The two main witnesses accusing the centre-left politicians have now been indicted, one for money-laundering last year and the other, Antonio Volpe, for perjury last week. At the same time, a special Parliamentary Committee was set up in 2002 to investigate the possible political involvement. It only had the support of the centre-right.

With Volpe’s arrest, the centre-left is trying to close the Parliamentary Commission saying that Volpe’s perjury is proof that the whole “scandal” was invented. The government is playing for time. Mr. Berlusconi has repeated that the deal was a mistake though he has retreated from saying it was criminal. The centrist UDC Marco Follini has suggested a compromise where Prodi and the others will admit to political or economic errors and any suggestion of criminal activity will be dropped.

It is not going to happen; Mr. Prodi has already explained that the deal actually profitted the Treasury as Telecom shares went up between the Serbia purchase and privatisaiton (Repubblica.it/politica: Prodi: "Con Telekom S...). In any case the bitter accusations have been so serious that it has become impossible to discuss the merits of the business.

Arguably, the deal was justified both politically, diplomatically and economically in 1997 and arguably with hindsight it turned out to be a mistake on all counts. There is also a fair chance that some of the commissions paid ended up in the hands of shady middlemen. But we are not going to hear those arguments or the evidence, at least not in the near future.

If, as seems likely today, the Prodi-Fassino-Dini connection is shown to be a complete fabrication, there will always be the lingering doubts. We know that there will always be the possibility of disclosures close to the elections; on the other side, the substance of the deal will not be aired and above all, the presumptions of guilt, innocence and conspiracy will continue for months, years and maybe decades.